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		<title>Beginning the installation &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2017/09-September/17.xhtml&gt;</title>
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			<h1>Beginning the installation</h1>
			<p>Day 00925: Sunday, 2017 September 17</p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/09/17.jpg" alt="Overwriting the hard drive with random data" class="weblog-header-image" width="800" height="480" />
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		I read one of the assignments for the week, and I&apos;m required to talk about what processes my computer is running that I think are slowing the system down.
		While my system&apos;s out of commission and I can&apos;t look into it.
		Lovely.
		I&apos;m going to need to install Debian 9 right away after all.
		First, I looked into what Wi-Fi card the machine&apos;s currently using.
		I couldn&apos;t figure that out, but I did find something even better: the name of the <strong>*driver*</strong> being used for Wi-Fi.
		I looked into that driver, and it&apos;s proprietary.
		It&apos;s installed in Debian via a package in <code>contrib</code>.
		That means it won&apos;t work on my new system, so I can&apos;t leave it alone and simply install.
		I might as well first swap the Wi-Fi card to be sure the machine doesn&apos;t have <abbr title="digital restrictions management">DRM</abbr> to reject it.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next Step recycling seals off the hard drive bays of the laptops they sell.
		If you break the seal, your warranty is void.
		However, they don&apos;t prevent you from opening the other panels of the machine and performing any other hardware swaps you need to.
		That is, normally.
		On this machine, the entire bottom is a removable plate, and that&apos;s how you get in to replace stuff.
		They sealed the hard drive door to this plate, preventing the plate from being removed as well!
		I did my best to try to move the plate just enough to get at the Wi-Fi card without disturbing the side that was sealed, but then something magical happened.
		With an unexpected jerk, the entire panel came off, yet the seal was somehow intact.
		My warranty wasn&apos;t voided, and yet I can get at even the hard drive!
	</p>
	<p>
		The Wi-Fi card is tiny, as is the space where it fits.
		Thankfully, I have a tiny Wi-Fi card to work with from <a href="/en/domains/thinkpad-x60s.local.xhtml"><code>thinkpad-x60s</code></a>.
		I&apos;m not sure why, but the Libreboot developer, who also sells laptops with their software preinstalled, uses these tiny Wi-Fi cards with adaptors to make them fit the machines&apos; regular-sized Wi-Fi card slot, even though regular-sized Wi-Fi cards that work in an entirely-free environment do exist.
		I was able to locate my old card, and get it installed in the new machine.
		Upon rebooting, I found the machine didn&apos;t reject the Wi-Fi card.
		I was in a rush though, so instead of installing the operating system from scratch, I decided to swap <a href="/en/domains/morgan.local.xhtml"><code>morgan</code></a>&apos;s hard drive in.
		That didn&apos;t go as well as planned.
		The system booted up, but it didn&apos;t recognise the Wi-Fi card.
		Joy.
		I verified that the needed driver is free, though I&apos;m not sure how to get it installed.
		Next, I tried installing the system from scratch on yet a third hard drive.
	</p>
	<p>
		I couldn&apos;t sign my <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> today, as while I had a working laptop, it didn&apos;t have my necessary setup.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed my mother wanted to buy each of her children an exotic pet in a few years.
		This pet was something I&apos;d never heard of, and lived in what looked like a hamster ball.
		However, unlike a regular hamster ball, this one had gear notches and was set inside giant hamster tubes with matching notches.
		As a result, the hamster ball could be rolled through the tubes, even vertically.
		She asked if we even wanted one though to be sure she wasn&apos;t giving us something we didn&apos;t want.
		I said I&apos;d pass, and that&apos;s when she went on the offensive.
		She asked why I didn&apos;t want one, and I said I don&apos;t want pets of any sort.
		She kept trying to explain why this pet was no trouble to take care of, and I kept saying it wasn&apos;t that I thought the pet&apos;d be a pain, I just didn&apos;t want it.
		I was trying really hard not to tell her that I don&apos;t keep pets for ethical reasons, as I was trying not to sound accusatory of her own desires for one and for giving them, but she was really pressing me into it.
		Luckily, I woke up, but it was way too early, so I went back to bed.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, I dreamed that a mistake&apos;d been made.
		I don&apos;t recall the nature of the mistake, but we needed to go back in time to fix it.
		Both my parents and all their children seemed to live in our old house on H Street.
		We dug through the garage to find the time machine, but it didn&apos;t seem to be there.
		We found something that shouldn&apos;t be left out on the carport out there anyway, and I was blamed.
		Thankfully, the item hadn&apos;t been stolen.
		I didn&apos;t remember putting it there, but I accepted the blame.
		But then we found the time machine out there too, and I was blamed again.
		I knew for a fact I wouldn&apos;t&apos;ve left <strong>*that*</strong> in the spot we found it.
		After arguing my innocence, there was a flashback that showed us that Vanessa&apos;d pulled several items from the garage and left them when she was getting out the lawn mower.
		She was nearly in tears after learning it was her fault the stuff&apos;d been left out in the open.
		It was my job to set up the collapsing time machine, but after it&apos;d been found, it disappeared on me.
		I found some motor oil that made race car sounds as it sat in its bottle.
		Eventually, I asked my mother if she&apos;d seen the time machine, and annoyed, she pointed to it.
		She&apos;d moved it up on top of something tall, a dresser or shelf, then expected me to know where it was.
		Of course, I had no way to know it&apos;d been moved, and I was still looking for it on the pavement where it&apos;d initially been discovered.
		I woke up before removing the collapsible time machine from its protective carry case, so I&apos;m not sure what it looked like.
	</p>
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